2-3-4 Friday: Stop chasing

‘Seeking to spark the most potential within you per word of any online newsletter’

1 thought

For those who are new, let me frame this newsletter.

Please unsubscribe if you don’t like new perspectives.

1. This newsletter is written from my personal experiences running, and bootstrapping a business (at this iteration, a design agency) from scratch. I cannot guarantee that much of it is good, but I can tell you that it will be written from someone who’s fighting tooth, nail and claw to survive. So it’s not going to be always something uplifting - but speaks from someone with real skin in the game. If you’d like nice soundbites, this isn’t the place.
2. Why read it? To make better decisions through ethnographic experiences. Because after reading tons of self-help books, I’ve come to see that those processes, sometimes aren’t as useful as reading the perspective of someone who’s done it, and the aftereffects of that. That’s why business owners like reading biographies, and business students like reading self-help books. Because life doesn’t have a manual, it’s meant to be lived, and a way to live it better is to learn from what others have done.
3. I’m not some great person. I write this because it forces me to distill what I learn each week into something concise.

With that, let’s go.

Today I turn 30. Beyond sharing that you shouldn’t bootstrap business because of how much hair you’ll lose (I’ve lost most of my hair now), I will share two quick stories about the time when I was 20.

Guy on left with less hair, is of course, yours truly.

From January to September 2015, for 9 months, I had done everything I could to organize big volunteer events whilst still in the army. This involved a big event for those with special needs, bringing together 320 parents, beneficiaries and parents for an afternoon of thanksgiving.

After a long day of training in the army, when there was a nights off, I would scoot out to the home of my friend nearby, use his computer for 2 hours, before quickly rushing back.

But there was an ulterior motive. I just wanted to make my resumé nice enough to get into medical school. Needless to say, I didn’t.

I lost all sense of hope, and wanted to end my life. If there was no medical school, there was no point living.

I had chased all these time to enter an industry where I had few strengths, and landed up with nothing.

In the end, I was offered a scholarship in social work, ironically, for all the volunteer events I did.

From October 2019 to Sep 2021, I tried to be the best social worker I could. I wrote books, started a business, and even collaborated internationally to use better social work toolkits. I eventually left that charity because of the scholarship’s requirements to rotate. But I had applied for 71 jobs, and still gotten no offers.

April 2022. I sat with the director of a big charity, talking to her about my situation. I had strived to be great at social work, starting a social enterprise, writing books, collaborating internationally to use better social work toolkits, speaking at events.

She sat there listening, and told me,

it doesn’t look like you really want to be a social worker.

Suddenly it clicked.

I had spent all these while chasing, but I wasn’t sure if I had really wanted that career. I was living the career the scholarship had endowed on me. But was it something I wanted?

I didn’t know.

I just knew I was tired of chasing.

This year, during the Annual General Meeting of Sheng Siong, a big supermarket, the CEO said,

these shopping malls are coming to us and asking us to open a store in their mall.

Things are always different,

when we let them come.

I will say this again because it’s such an important concept.

Things are always different, when we let them come.

Please don’t get me wrong.

There’s a place for hard work, and seizing the opportunities that appear in front of you. You definitely have to apply for that job, chase that person you like, and email that sales prospect.

But after running this business for the last 5 years, I’ve come to see that we often focus on the chase, but we don’t focus enough on letting them come.

The world teaches us that we have to hustle and fight for what we want, but today I’m going to tell you that there’s also a place for stepping back and letting good things come to you.

Work on the right things

This isn’t about being lazy, but rather, it’s about working on the right things, so that better things come to you.

For example, over the past 3 years, I’ve gone on 22 different dates. Some were set up, paid for, but all of them didn’t work out. When I look back, I realised there were at least 3 great people, but because of my limited beliefs, 

I never let them into my life.

Let shit go

So the first question often is,

is there even space for good things to come into your life?

There are the time constraints that we often know about. What we often don’t realise is that we also often hold onto shit in the spaces we are part of.

The problem is that we never know that this is bad, because our minds are self-deceptive. Here’s an example. I used to hold onto my anger about someone who’d rejected me. Until I was able to talk to her about how hurt I felt, and how it felt like something in our friendship broke, and how it was impossible for her to expect me to suddenly welcome her waltzing into my life again.

Until I named that discomfort to her, I was blinkered. I was unable to see the other good people in my life.

So if the first element is to clear out the bad, to make way for the good, then the next option is to figure out what exactly we should be working on. After all, we can’t be sitting about waiting for miracles to drop from Heaven. 

Though sometimes they do.

Work on the character of your craft

The first time I was paid for writing was in September 2018, as a pimply 23 year old trying to make pocket money in university. £20 for 1000 words. 

Over the years I started writing what I wanted.

Things changed when my friend in business told me,

you know…

it’s quite selfish if you just write what you want, but few others are served by it.

That tipped me to seeing what people were spending their energies on, and to helping them find an outlet for that through my work.

So working on the right thing for me, was learning to talk to real humans about what they actually enjoyed reading. And then going back and refining what we were working on.

I stopped picking topics I knew, but started picking topics that others cared about.

Basically, it’s about working on something that people care about, and you are most equipped to do.

So yes, do all that marketing and sales and prospecting, but more than anything else, focus on your strengths. What you’re best at. What comes to you most naturally.

And you’ll knock it out of the park.

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Don’t just let it go.

Let good things come.

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I’m not successful. In fact, just yesterday, as I stared at the loans I took out to keep the company going as we waited for clients to pay us, I wondered if it was all a farce.

I was shooting a sales pitch at everything that moved. My friend, my acquaintance, even a random email I found off the back of a name card left in a hotel.

But none of that worked.

What works? Just doing the best with what you’re assigned with.

Lately, as I’ve chased more and more sales, I’ve realised that we’ve neglected the work that good clients have placed on our laps, trusting us to do it well. 

We’ve kept our eyes on the horizon, trying to find the next big sale, rather than doing what’s on our laps.

As the Chinese say,

远在天边，近在眼前。(Our eyes are often on the horizon, but what we are searching for is just in front of us.)

So this year, I’m learning to let things come. To do the best with what I’m assigned, what I’m good at, and to let the rest go.

What are you learning about yourself this year?

You could just reply to this email, I do read, and will reply if there’s a need.

John

Live Young, Live Well - Work Your Love